Brian slammed his palm down on his desk in frustration. He couldn't believe the thing that had just landed in his inbox. The art department had sent him a prelim of the Iams magazine ad he assigned them a fortnight ago, and it was a complete disaster. The whole design abounded with orange accents and cringe-worthy swirls of text, which wasn't even close to what Brian had asked for. He had left specific instructions for the art department to create the ad in the spirit of David Carson and they gave him a jumbled mess with an unrealistic-looking dog in the middle of it. It was like they didn't even know what a David Carson design looked like, which was a horrid thing to say about professional graphic designers.

Safe to say, Brian was furious. He threw a glance at his clock as he stood up - noting it was almost half three, so the whole art department should be long back from their lunch break - and strode out of his office. 

Storming into the artists' bailiwick, Brian immediately began lambasting the designers, directing his diatribe at Brad and Bob, the indistinguishable artists, and the incompetent font bloke in particular. "What the fuck is this supposed to be?" he bellowed, slamming the prelim down on one of the moron twin's desks.

‘Brad or Bob' didn't cower as he usually did when confronted with an irate Kinney, instead removing the draft advertisement from the center of his desk and setting it to the side. "A dog, Brian; it's a dog," he murmured.

The other twin's head bobbed up and down in agreement. "Yeah, modelled after my aunt's mutt. Cute bugger, don't you think?"

"Then your aunt clearly has serious problems with radiation," Brian roared, "because that creature looks like a mutant mole. And what's with that font?"

"I thought the orange lettering was really classy," font boy defended himself. "I mean, what dog wouldn't prefer Iams?"

"You think the dog walks into the store and buys the food?" Brian caustically demanded. "It's the dog owners we're targeting, you nitwit."

"I'd buy it," the twins piped up in eerie unison.

"For that radioactive rat terrier?" Brian sneered. "I doubt even your aunt would buy Iams if she saw this garbage." With that, he pushed the disaster of an advertisement back to the center of the twin's desk.

"Then show us what you want," the font fuckup requested in a gratingly reasonable voice. "We gave you what you requested; I don't see how you can expect more of us." He sniffed dismissively and returned to the project he'd been working on.

"You're not getting away with that," Brian snarled, "not if you want to keep working here at Ryder, where we insist on a quality product for our clients." He loomed over the desk of the carrot topped, pimply faced font moron and ordered, "You're going to work with the Kishimoto twins and produce an adequate prelim I can present to the clients tomorrow. I don't care if it takes the three of you all afternoon or all night."

Backing away from the font farce's desk and looking at the undynamic trio, Brian gritted out, "Do you understand?"

All three men looked resentful but acquiesced as Brian expected. "Shoot me an email with the revised ad attached," he commanded. "Do not leave the office until I approve of it," he reiterated before stalking out of the art department.

Brian didn't give a fuck that he wasn't meeting with the client until the following week. If he didn't light a fire under the dipsticks' arses, they'd never come up with a remotely useable ad.

The advertising executive couldn't figure out what was up with the unartistic team as he returned to his office. They'd seemed distracted and not as in awe of him as usual, when normally they would scurry around in a satisfyingly servile manner while he berated them. Brian didn't consider them to be completely incompetent, although he had to give them an excessive amount of direction, even micromanaging them. So why hadn't the asshats been more responsive this time? 

Brian detoured into the break room to grab a cup of the sludge that passed for coffee, only for the two women who had been chatting away to fall silent and look at him sidelong. What was up with everyone today? Were they all on drugs? Ignoring the girls and their zombie-like silence, he heaped sugar into his coffee cup, poured in some of the dark liquid which smelled burnt as usual, and returned to his office.

Not half an hour later, Brian rubbed at his eyes, shoving away in disgust the Kofola account he had started working on. He couldn't concentrate, worries about what Thomas might do preying on his mind. When Cynthia rapped on his door a few minutes later, he was glad of the interruption and hoped she had gleaned some gossip about that manipulative sales rep.

"I know you don't like bad news to be sugar-coated, Brian," she began, reaching a placating hand out toward her boss, "so I'll come right out with it, okay?"

Immediately put on the alert by his secretary's approach to the topic, Brian shrugged fatalistically and said, "Let's have it."

"The whole building is buzzing like a kicked-over wasp's nest," Cynthia reported. "Now, this is third or fourth hand gossip, but apparently, Thomas talked with a couple of his buddies in the sales department and accused you of sexually harassing him. He told them you've threatened that you'd have him fired if he didn't let you fuck him."

"That slimy git has some serious delusions of desirability," Brian grunted. "I'll admit I might have fucked him under different circumstances, but I'll never need to coerce anyone into sleeping with me." In spite of the seriousness of the situation, he smirked to himself as he remembered calling it the ‘fuck defense' during his meeting with Melanie.

"I don't think there's any way to put a stop to the rampant speculations," Cynthia stated angrily as she paced back and forth in front of Brian's desk for the second day in a row. "Kip probably lied to his friends because they had heard about Marty practically dragging him out of your office and asked him what was going on. My guess is that he reversed what actually happened to garner sympathy and place the blame on you."

"Don't tell me," Brian grumbled, "the general consensus is that I'm guilty."

"You're absolutely correct," his secretary fumed. "Some of those tasteless fools have even started a wager as to how long it will be before Ryder fires you."

Brian leaned on his elbows, bracing his chin with his hands, "What's the outside bet as to how long I'll last?"

Slumping into a chair across from Brian, Cynthia huffed, "One month."

The ad exec stared at his assistant, who had been invaluable to him since she'd first started working for him four years earlier - not that he'd ever told her that, of course. Before the competent and confident blonde had come along, he'd been discarding secretaries almost as fast as he had been plowing through tricks. All of them had bitched that he was impossible to work for, while Brian had claimed they were just looking for excuses for their incompetence. He suddenly realised that if Cynthia hadn't already considered the trickle-down effect Thomas' accusations might have - not only on Brian but also on her - she should be doing so.

"Cynthia, I don't know how Ryder's going to proceed with Thomas," he morosely acknowledged, "but Marty will think of himself and his firm first and foremost, which probably doesn't bode well for me. You should consider your options in case I'm thrown out on my ear." Brian had always suspected that Ryder was ruled by self-interest, and after meeting with the bulldyke lawyer, he was more convinced than ever that he should watch his back. Marty would jettison Brian as fast as possible to avoid the damage a ‘gay scandal' might cause.

"What with the shitstorm Thomas has kicked up, I'm already thinking about it," Cynthia confessed. "All the jealous Brian-wannabes are turning this place into a dysfunctional hotbed of intrigue. Can you believe one idiot from the IT department was speculating with a group gathered round the water cooler that you and Kip were in a D/s relationship? He charged off to congratulate Kip on escaping from his ‘master'.

A burst of laughter escaped Brian at that crazy theory, but he rapidly sobered as he realized how clearly that demonstrated that some of Ryder's other employees despised him. He was aware that many men - both homo- and heterosexual - envied his advertising acumen, fashion sense, and sex appeal; after all, that was all part of the Kinney mystique. Unfortunately, that led to spiteful colleagues and underlings - like Kip - rejoicing to see him taken down a peg or two.

"Brian, have you ever considered opening your own advertising firm?" Cynthia probed, drawing Brian out of his pensive thoughts. "I mean, you must have done, right? You're the one who brings in the big accounts and keeps them satisfied - without you, Ryder would be half the agency it is now."

"As a long-term goal, yes, I'd like to start my own business," Brian replied. "I expected, though, that I'd become Marty's partner first, gradually taking over the reins from him so that he could retire. He has been grooming me to become his partner for years, but this Thomas incident has undoubtedly shot that all to hell. If Kip hadn't opened his gob to his buddies after Ryder hauled him out of the office, the partnership might have still been on, but I fear it's too late to salvage it now."

"Well, if you ever do open your own firm, I want to be your first employee," the blonde asserted. "Just think about it, okay? You don't have to decide today."

"I'm not ready for my own firm yet," Brian explained. "You know, if Thomas had approached me in a rational manner about participating in a marketing campaign - rather than trying to rip off one of Coca-Cola's advertisements - I might have been willing to mentor him and help him climb the corporate ladder. I'd have let him know flat-out, though, that he needed more experience before he could handle a promotion."

When Cynthia made an encouraging noise for him to continue, Brian elaborated, "So now I'm in the same boat that Kip could have been in as far as advancing my career. Sure, I'm a savvy advertising executive, and I have an excellent track record of increasing sales for my clients, but I don't have any experience managing a firm. If Marty made me a partner, I would acquire that know-how in an established agency."

"Couldn't you learn on the job?" Cynthia suggested, her voice a little pleading; "that should be feasible as long as you hire top-notch employees, right?"

Brian commented dryly, "Maybe... as long as I didn't end up epitomizing the Peter principle, rising to the level of my own incompetence, and running my fledgling business into the ground within the first year."

When Cynthia began to protest that he could never be that inept a manager, Brian requested, "Let's table that discussion for the foreseeable future and try to get through what remains of this hellish week. Please?"

The blonde gaped at her boss in consternation when the word ‘please' fell out of his mouth; Brian figured she had thought he didn't even know the word, let alone how to use it. At least it had silenced her well-intentioned prattle about starting his own agency. 

"What I need right now," the beleaguered ad exec exclaimed as he pushed his chair back from the desk and stood up, "is something to eat. I'm waiting for the morons in the art department to get their shit together and send me a revised prelim of the Iams advert. I've told the three blockheads that they can't go home until they produce something acceptable, so they may come whining to you."

Cynthia chuckled, "Don't worry, Brian, if that happens, I'll just crack the whip and send them back to their cubicles."

An image of his secretary as a whip-wielding dominatrix clad in black leather had the brunet laughing as he exited the office and drove to the diner.

Brian's stomach rumbled as he pushed open the door of Liberty's most famous eating establishment. Of course, its fame might also accrue from being the only eatery in the vicinity of all the bars, clubs, and shops that adorned the length of Liberty Avenue.

The brunet didn't normally eat much during the day except, perhaps, for a green apple that he would grab from the bowl on his counter as he departed the loft. His recent overindulgence in bourbon, combined with the stress from the Thomas incident, had kept his gut churning for the last day and a half, making him even less peckish than usual. Not that he would have had an apple handy to munch on anyroad, what with the loft still off limits and the lesbians apparently not interested in munching on apples. Brian's face screwed up in an expression of distaste at the thought of what the girls did like to munch on.

While he was lost in those horrific contemplations, an enthusiastic "Brian!" and a smack of lips against his cheek caught him unawares.

"Deb, stop," Brian tried to fend off the redhead with limited success as she scrubbed at the makeup with her fingers. He would have to nip into the men's room as soon as possible to make sure that bright red lipstick wasn't now smeared across half his face.

Debbie just laughed, "Give over, you big lummox. You love it when I mother you."

Brian did indeed like that Deb showed how much she cared about him; as far as he was concerned, she was the only real parent he'd ever had, certainly the only loving one. He wasn't about to admit any such sentiment to his surrogate mother, however, not unless he was sure no one else would overhear.

"This may come as a surprise, but I actually stopped in here to eat, not to be fussed over," Brian commented as he sidled around Deb and settled into the nearest open booth.

As the brunet's stomach grumbled again noisily, Debbie placed one hand against her chest as if in shock, and declared, "Why, Brian Kinney, you're really and truly hungry."

With a sheepish look on his face, Brian muttered, "My appetite's been off lately." He hoped Debs hadn't gotten wind of his binge with Melanie or that he'd spent the previous evening drowning his sorrows; she'd tell him that was no way to solve his problems. 

But as he had hoped she would do, she ascribed his uncooperative stomach to the Thomas situation. "Small wonder you haven't felt like eating, Honey," the concerned redhead commiserated, before dropping her voice and asking, "any developments with that weasel at Ryder?"

"Nothing except malicious gossip," Brian wearily replied, "so I decided it would help to get out of the office for an early dinner."

"You keep standing up to that slimy bastard, you hear me?" Debbie urged. "Live your life out and proud, just like you've always done."

Bestowing a lopsided grin on the motherly waitress, Brian teased, "Can I have some food to go with that advice?"

"Sure thing, Honey. How about something more exciting than whole wheat toast sans butter?" Deb inquired with a twinkle in her eyes.

"Huh, breakfast for dinner does sound tempting," Brian mused. "Bring me an order of French toast and bacon, syrup on the side."

"Carbs," Deb gasped, "aren't you breaking one of your precious rules?"

"What?" Brian snapped; "it's not seven o'clock yet."

"Bacon and French toast it is," Deb confirmed, shaking her head in bewilderment as she went to deliver Brian's order to the cook.

Later on, after he had consumed his dinner, including every drop of syrup in the little container, the ad exec was on his laptop, responding to email messages from clients, when his inbox pinged to inform him that he had received an email from Ryder's art department. "Finally," he muttered, clicking on the message to open it.

Aghast, he stared at the altered version of the Iams dog food ad, which looked even worse than the first prelim. The wonky dog appeared to have undergone another round of radiation, and the font was now an electric shade of blue.

He fleetingly wondered whether the three cretins in the art department were deliberately trying to piss him off. The font bloke must have gotten lazy, simply going with the association of the color blue with money and credibility in the advertising world. It clearly didn't suit dog food, though, and had ended up making the advert look like total shite.

 There was no way he was going to let the three fuckups off the hook. Pulling out his cell phone, Brian dialed the director of the art department to read him the riot act.

"Chuck," he growled after the man had picked up the phone, "what the fuck is the problem with the team you assigned to the Iams account? Both the prelim and the revision are complete rubbish."

"Brian, you've got to stop reaming out my artists," the art department head advised. "It's counterproductive."

Brian's stomach roiled all over again at the double entendre behind ‘reaming them out'. Had Chuck intended that sexual innuendo, or was he simply being paranoid? Pushing that aside for later consideration, Brian argued, "If they would do their jobs right in the first place, I wouldn't have to take them to task, now would I?"

"My boys showed me the instructions you gave them, Brian," Chuckie-Boy countered, "and I must say they were rather vague. Why don't you try providing some more detail?"

"Richardson, the guidance I gave them was more than sufficient. They're experienced graphic designers, for fuck's sake, not trained monkeys," Brian bit out, "although they could probably do a better job."

"I say, Brian, that's going a bit too far," the art chief replied in a smarmily superior tone.

"I haven't gone far enough," Brian contended, voice threatening. "Your boys had better be there when I get back to the office. I'll have them working their asses off until they come up with an adequate mock-up."

Wishing he could slam the phone down in the man's ear, Brian pushed the ‘end call' button and looked around for the blond brat he'd seen enter the diner while he'd been on the phone. The teen had sent a tentative smile in his direction, but the brunet had given him the cold shoulder again, turning on his seat so that he was facing the window. Now, Justin was standing behind the counter, putting on his apron. Maybe, he could truly be of some use, for a change. 

Completely incensed at the audacity of the art director, Brian stood up, grabbing a napkin from the dispenser on his table. He then pulled out a pen from his inner suit pocket before stomping over to the counter, where he shoved both items at Justin. "Draw me a dog, would you?" he told him in an impatient voice.

Justin stared at him in disbelief. "What?" he croaked out.

"A dog?" the brunet repeated.

Still taken aback, Justin decided to just go with the flow and do as he was told. "Okay, eh, what sort of dog?"

His former lover shrugged, looking more and more impatient by the second. "I don't know, a Lab? A German shepherd? I don't care as long as it looks like a dog."

Not wanting to question the fact that Brian was apparently talking to him again, the blond accepted the pen as well as the napkin and started creating a quick sketch of a German shepherd in a curled up position. It was rough, the details not as precise as he would've liked them on a flimsy paper napkin, but when he presented it to Brian, the man seemed happy with it.

"Perfect," he said, "that'll do to prove my point."

Justin gave him a questioning look, not sure what Brian was on about, but the brunet ignored him, turning on his heel and scarpering. So much for talking to him again, then - Justin had obviously been kidding himself.

"You all right over there, Sunshine?" Debbie called out as she returned from delivering orders to eight rowdy lesbians, who had somehow managed to cram themselves into one booth. She joked, "You should shut your gob, Kiddo, or you'll catch flies."

"Huh?" the dazed teen responded. He'd been gaping at the door through which Brian had just so precipitately departed.

"You're awfully pale," Deb fretted, "are you coming down with something?"

"No, really, I'm not sick," Justin protested. "I just had such a weird encounter with Brian that I don't know what to think. He wanted me to draw a dog, any dog, on a napkin and when I did, he dashed out of here without so much as a thank you."

"Well, that's bizarre, for sure. Even by Brian's standards," the waitress acknowledged. "Maybe you should cut him some slack though, as he's been under a lot of stress lately."

"Okay," Justin shrugged in easy-going acceptance; he refused to let the brunet's irrational behavior get to him. At least he hadn't been bitching about all Justin's supposed faults this time around.

Brian charged back into the art department, infuriated to see the recalcitrant artists chattering away with not a care in the world, none of them doing a lick of work. The font buffoon even had his chair tilted back, feet up on his desk with ankles crossed. The ad exec barely resisted the hankering to pull his chair out from under the lackluster font designer; he had to issue a stern warning to himself that the fool would probably break his coccyx - and then sue Brian for bodily harm. Another lawsuit was sure to be the death knell to his tenure at Ryder, if not to his career in advertising.

"Listen up! This," Brian railed, flinging the napkin with Justin's sketch down in front of one of the twins, "is what a dog looks like. Not that radioactive mongrel you had the audacity to send me."

The man glanced at the drawing and shrugged, "Nothing special about it. Any five-year-old could have done that."

"If that's the case," Brian sneered, "it should tax your acuity to its limits. Go on," he challenged, "try and duplicate that sketch. A high-schooler needed only three minutes to draw it, but I'll be generous and give you five." With that, he pushed back his sleeve to access his watch and time the man's progress.

When he noticed the flabbergasted artist simply staring at him, he snidely recommended, "You'd better get started. You only have four-and-a-half minutes left."

Brian grinned to himself in satisfaction as the man's pencil flew across the paper, the artist darting quick looks at the napkin to make sure he was accurately duplicating the German shepherd. It looked like he hadn't entirely lost the ability to intimidate, the brunet ruminated. Not only was twin numero uno actually drawing, the other two idiots had pulled up the offensive ad and were quietly discussing a redesign.

"Time's up," Brian stated after five minutes had elapsed. Taking the drawing from the artist and assessing it, he declared, "Even though the dog is missing one paw and looks a bit anemic, it's far better than the mangy cur you created earlier."

The artist looked rather abashed, muttering, "Shit, it's more difficult to just freehand draw than I remember it being."

Appalled that an artist would allow himself to become so rusty in the basics of his profession, Brian lectured, "Practice makes perfect. Go out at lunch and draw what you see - people, buildings, plants, what-the-fuck-ever. Then, maybe, you'll make a halfway decent graphic designer."

The brunet couldn't help remembering how Justin was almost always sketching something. The blond was rarely still, his fingers always itching to hold a pencil and pour out his observations onto any scrap of paper, even a napkin. It was only now, as he thought about how Justin's artistry was an inseparable part of the lad, that Brian realized he had spoken to the teen at the diner despite his determination to ignore him. 

His thoughts were interrupted by the shrill sound of his cell phone ringing. He pulled it out of his suit pocket and looked at the screen, which read 'Jennifer' in bold black lettering. This day was getting better and better, he contemplated, not sure what Justin's mother could possibly want.

After his shift at the diner, Justin pulled out the notes he'd made on the influence of money in politics and started drafting the essay for his American Government class at the desk in Michael's room. During his hours of research, he'd come to the conclusion that money and politics couldn't be separated. He decided to open his paper with a provocative quote from Mark Hanna which reflected that reality. "There are two things that are important in politics," the great Republican kingmaker of the late nineteenth century had said. "The first thing is money, and I can't remember what the second one is." 

Justin provided numerous examples to back up his claim, demonstrating that money was always necessary to run for public office in a democracy, especially at the federal level, whether in the nineteenth or twenty-first century.

The young man was startled out of his intense concentration when Vic rapped on the open door to the bedroom. "Justin, I forgot to tell you earlier that Brian called and left a message that your mother is trying to reach you."

"Oh, he didn't say anything else?" Justin wondered. His mum must have called after he'd seen Brian at the diner, or the man surely would have mentioned it. They'd actually conversed, albeit briefly, as Brian had asked Justin to sketch him a dog.

"Nope, that was it. He called about an hour before you got home," Vic said, confirming the teen's supposition that the message had been relayed after he'd seen the brunet.

Justin groaned to himself at the thought of talking to his mother; he wasn't feeling all that charitable after her indifference toward him at Molly's birthday party. It wouldn't do to ignore his mum, however, since he didn't want her to pester Brian again; he could just imagine how pissy that would make the brunet. "Thanks, Vic," he acknowledged, "I'll take a break in a few and give her a ring - as long as neither you nor Debbie need the phone."

"No worries," the older man chuckled, "we're not in the middle of anything important. Anyone needs to get hold of us that badly, they can call back." Vic had started toward the stairs when he turned around. "There's not much on the telly tonight, so Sis and I thought we might play a game of Scrabble after we watch the local news. You interested in joining us?"

Justin was momentarily at a loss for words. He and Brian used to play Scrabble frequently, partly just for fun and partly in an ongoing competition to see who could win the most games. In fact, they'd played two rounds last Thursday, not quite a week ago, with the teen emerging the winner in a ‘two out of three' contest. A grin covered Justin's face as he recalled how he'd collected his winnings...

"Justin?" Vic's voice jolted him back to the present, "it's only if you feel like it, Kiddo."

"Uh, yeah," Justin stammered before forcing some enthusiasm into his voice, "sounds like fun." And he wasn't lying; it probably would be fun, as long as he could keep his mind off Mr Tall, Dark, and Handsome.

"In about half an hour then," Vic mentioned as he left the room.

Unable to focus with the looming phone call at the forefront of his mind, Justin set his essay aside. After clattering down the stairs, he picked up the receiver of the wall phone and dialed the number that had once been his own. It was the number a tearful five-year-old Justin had rattled off to Mrs. Chanders after falling down and skinning his knees while playing hopscotch with Daphne on the sidewalk. Jennifer had scooped him up and showered him with kisses, making him giggle and forget all about his owies as well as the sting from cleansing the wounds and applying antibiotic ointment. 

As the phone rang at his parents' house, he remembered another occasion on which he'd had to dial that number. It had happened this past summer, after he had drunk too much at a kegger hosted by a friend's brother and his fraternity buddies. Craig had answered the phone and hadn't seemed particularly upset; later, when the overly-pale teen - who'd smelled like a brewery and had disgusting stains on his jeans - had gingerly climbed into the Ford Mustang, his dad had clapped him on the shoulder and announced, "All part of growing up, son." That weirdly proud reaction was in stark contrast to the way Craig had reacted when he had discovered his son was gay.

This time, it was Molly's voice chirping, "Hello?" as the receiver was picked up.

"Hey, Mollusk," Justin affectionately greeted the eight-year-old girl. He didn't want her to catch on that anything might be wrong, so he made sure to sound cheery.

Before he could say anything else, Molly shrieked, "Jester! I really love the drawing. Mum hasn't been able to take me to the mall yet to get a frame..."

His sister was abruptly cut off as Jennifer's voice carried over the line, "Justin? I'm so glad you called; I was doubtful that Brian would deliver my message."

Already feeling somewhat resentful that she hadn't taken Molly shopping for some kind of frame to display the sketch, his mother's cool tone regarding Brian exacerbated his reluctance to speak with her. He knew it had only been a few days since the birthday party, but his sister had seemed really excited about the portrait. Plus, framing the drawing to hang it up would have been a gesture of goodwill toward Justin, the son Jennifer had neglected to contact until now.

So to have his mum slander Brian and make the man responsible for her lack of communication got Justin's dander up. In a decidedly frosty voice, he declared, "Brian relayed your message, Mum. Why did you call?" Justin knew he was being rather curt, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances. His thumb twitched as it hovered over the hook switch; depressing it would end this decidedly awkward, rather antagonistic exchange.

Justin removed his fingers from the base unit as he resisted the temptation to hang up on his mum. Cradling the handset between his shoulder and his ear, he stepped over to the fridge, the curly phone cord stretching out behind him. He extracted a carton of milk and began pouring it while waiting for his mum to tell him the reason for her call. 

Finally, Jennifer exasperatedly stated, "I wanted to make sure you're doing okay, of course."

The teen rolled his eyes as he snatched a lemon bar from the container on the kitchen counter and sat down at the table with his snack. There wasn't much ‘of course' about it, or Jennifer would have contacted him sooner. 

"I'm fine, Mum," he responded dryly, surprised when he realized that was actually true. He was coping with the aftermath of the burglary better than expected; there was even a glimmer of hope that Brian would start treating him like a mensch again. Debbie and Vic had welcomed him into their household and family; he had a job; and despite the bullying, he was excelling in his classes at St. James. He was fine.

"Well, how are your classes? Have you made some new friends?" Jennifer lamely continued speaking.

Justin lifted the handset and looked at it in disgust. It wasn't as though he had suddenly switched to another school; he'd been attending St. James since the first grade. He was unlikely to have made new friends in the last few days, so he couldn't figure out the reason for the inane question. Why couldn't Jennifer act like she used to before discovering he was gay? She was behaving like a virtual stranger he hadn't spoken to in years. At this rate, the next thing she'd mention would be the weather.

Sure enough. "So, I heard that a cold front accompanied by heavy rain and wind is supposed to move into the area for the Veterans Day weekend," Jennifer noted when Justin remained silent about his classes.

"I feel sorry for the vets who will be parading in those miserable conditions," Justin observed, playing along. 

Jennifer hmmed noncommittally, seeming disinterested in the ramifications of said nasty weather, even though she had raised the topic.

Justin shivered as he pondered how he would have fared if the weather had been so malign just a few days ago. What if he had been thrown out of the loft into pouring rain? He would have rapidly become chilled and soaked to the skin, counting himself lucky if he didn't get really sick. Imagining that scenario, he suddenly felt more grateful than ever to Debbie for taking him in. Without Deb, who had offered him a job and a home, Justin would probably be a vagrant, regularly taking shelter at the bus station with Jed and other homeless winos.

Shit. He needed to let his mum know he was staying with Deb and Vic so she wouldn't annoy Brian with more calls. "Listen, Mum, if you want to talk to me again, you should call me at Debbie's house, okay?" 

"What? You're living with Deb now? I expected you to still be with that man after your rude performance at our house," Jennifer reproved her son.

Justin refrained from pointing out that man had a name, which his mum darned well knew; she'd spoken to Brian earlier that evening. Gritting his teeth, he queried sardonically, "You mean after Dad hit me and threatened to send me away to boarding school?"

"Honey," Jennifer cautioned in a saccharine tone, "your father shouldn't have hit you, but if you'd just try and meet him halfway, things would be much different."

Justin carefully set down the glass which he had just raised to his mouth; he was gripping it so tightly that he feared it would shatter in his hand. Willing away the pain from his mother's remark, he took a deep breath. "That would mean hiding who I am. I won't do that for Dad, you, or anyone else," the teen declared. "You should be proud of me since you raised me to stand up for myself."

Jennifer claimed, "I promise - I stood up for you in front of your dad."

"Only until I moved out," Justin retorted, "at which point you were apparently relieved you didn't have to keep defending me. You certainly didn't seem impressed to see me at Molly's party."

"Justin... Sweetie... if you could just try to understand how difficult this is for us..." Jennifer begged.

The young man chuckled bitterly, "That's rich, Mum. I should sympathize with how difficult it is for you and Dad to have a gay son." Tired of the pointless, stilted conversation, Justin suddenly stated, "Look, I've gotta go. Do you want to write down this number or not?"

"Of course, I want the number," Jennifer huffed.

Justin was getting awfully tired of hearing his mother say ‘of course'; it was becoming less and less convincing the more she said it. Since there was nothing he could do to change her attitude, he just slowly recited, "It's 412-445-3764," giving her a chance to note it down.

"Got it," Jennifer confirmed before urging, "let me know if you need anything, okay?"

"Yeah, sure," Justin responded indifferently, "Bye, Mum." Hanging up the phone, he reflected that he'd already learned not to rely on Jennifer. Why would he go to her for help? She didn't want a queer son, so Justin assumed that anything she could potentially do for him would come with a price he wasn't willing to pay. 

The blond sighed, deliberately shunting aside further thoughts about his mother. While he polished off the lemon bar and drained the rest of his milk, he mulled over the best way to wrap up his essay. He then quickly rinsed out his glass and placed it in the dishwasher before trotting upstairs to whip out the final paragraphs.

When Deb's voice echoed up the stairwell shortly thereafter, "Hey, Sunshine, you ready for us to trounce you at Scrabble?" he had completed his essay and was more than ready for a break from schoolwork.

"Trash talking won't win the game," the blond asserted with a grin as he clomped down the stairs and into the living room. Rubbing his hands, he boasted, "Prepare to be whipped by the Scrabble guru."

"Oho, maybe we should set some good stakes for this game, Sis," Vic suggested.

A wicked twinkle in her eyes, the redhead proclaimed, "The losers clean and organize the attic this weekend."

"Fuck, Sis," Vic groaned as a dismayed expression settled over his visage, "no one has dug into the recesses of that attic since Tricky Dick was president."

"Yep, you're going to be wielding that feather duster while Sunshine handles the mop," Deb stated confidently. "We'll have ourselves a garage sale with the junk - uh, treasures - that you two unearth."

Justin sported an amused grin as he listened to the comradely banter between the siblings. He was pretty sure he would win the game, but if he lost, he wouldn't mind helping either Debbie or Vic put the attic to rights. In fact, he was pretty sure all three of them would end up pitching in, regardless of the outcome of the game.

"Vulgarities are gladly accepted," Vic announced with a wink as he unfolded the board, "so let's see how creative we can get."

The next forty-five minutes sped by, all three of them vying to spell out the dirtiest words possible. "Where's that bloody ‘K'?" Vic complained at one point; "can't suck dick without it."

"Woohoo!" Debbie exulted as she laid down the tiles to form ‘fucker,' using all but one of her remaining tiles. She earned only nineteen points for the word, but she was now ahead of Vic by thirty-one points, with Justin lagging another twenty-two points behind her brother. The redhead's smug smile showed that she had kept track of the S's and knew that all four had already been played; the two blanks were also on the board.

"You've fucked this fucker, Sis," Vic admitted with a rueful chuckle, "and not in a positive, life-affirming way," as he placed an ‘O' and a ‘P' next to the ‘C for a whopping fourteen-point, double-word score. He was left with four unused tiles on his rack.

"Hah!" Deb cackled, elbowing her brother in the ribs, "you got stuck with an unplayable ‘Q', didn't you?" 

Considering her win a foregone conclusion, the redhead rose from her chair, offering, "How about some ice cream and rhubarb pie as a consolation prize, gents? Gotta build up your energy for that attic," she then crowed in a teasing tone.

"Not so fast, Debs," Justin chided, "I haven't had my turn yet."

"C'mon, Sunshine, you aren't going to catch up to Vic's score, much less to mine," Debbie consoled the teen as she started toward the kitchen, "so why not concede and enjoy some dessert?"

"Holy shit!" Vic cursed admiringly from behind her, causing Deb to turn around and watch in open-mouthed disbelief as Justin spelled out ‘queenly' along the bottom of the board, the ‘Y' nestling up beneath the "R" of ‘fucker'.

Not only did Justin earn seventy-two points for ‘queenly' - the ‘Q' landing on a double letter score and the entire word counting for triple points - he added an additional nineteen points for ‘fuckery,' with the coup de grâce coming from the fifty-point award for using all seven tiles.

"Queenly fuckery," Debbie tittered, "if that don't beat all, Sunshine."

"One hundred points of fuckery," Vic guffawed. "We won't take it easy on you next time," he threatened, "now that we know you're hiding a Scrabble shark behind that sunshiny facade."

"Heck, we'll give you a handicap the next time we play," Debbie asserted. "Damn, but I haven't been drubbed that badly in years."

The trio laughed uproariously as they scarfed down the pie and ice cream, Deb good-naturedly poking fun at herself for thinking she'd won before the game was over.

Justin couldn't help comparing Debbie's behavior with the way Brian would sulk after losing at Scrabble. The redhead treated the game like it was all about fun - as if it were almost as good to lose as to win. The brunet, however, approached the game with deadly seriousness, and was sometimes such a sore loser that he would pout for hours, especially if Justin had outmatched him as dramatically as he had just done with Deb and Vic. It always left Justin slightly hesitant to gloat and properly enjoy his win, because he didn't want to further aggravate his lover. In contrast, being around the siblings was relaxing and fun, making Justin want to soak up even more of their carefree attitude. They had worries just like anyone else - especially with Vic constantly battling Aids - but they didn't let the little things get them down.

"Debbie," the teenager therefore earnestly offered after he finished his pie, "I want to help with the attic even though I won."

"Sunshine, no," his surrogate mother immediately demurred, "you have enough on your plate as it is - what with school and working at the diner."

"I'll have plenty of time this weekend," Justin insisted; "besides, my shifts at the diner are more fun than work." With a philosophical shrug, he continued, "Anyhow, exploring your attic sounds like a great way to celebrate ending my week in detention."

"Wait, won't all that dust and other crud set off your allergies?" Deb questioned, her brow furrowing. 

"We'll probably find mouse turds, and the floorboards are likely riddled with dry rot," the older man joined in.

Justin insisted, "Don't worry. I'll be fine; I take my pills every day." With a determined expression, he added, "Please, Deb, It's one small way I can thank you for giving me a home."

"Go on, Sis, you know we could use his help," Vic urged, while looking at Justin approvingly for wanting to show his gratitude in a concrete way.

Debbie still looked at Justin doubtfully before hesitantly giving in, "If you're sure..."

"I'm positive," Justin excitedly replied, beaming at his benefactress. "It'll be like a treasure hunt."

"Tell you what, Sunshine, you can have the pick of any treasures we find, to do with as you will," the motherly woman proposed with a bemused smile.

"Killer deal," Justin responded, more than pleased to spend a good chunk of the weekend in a musty attic with his housemates. The weekend was shaping up nicely - his shifts at the diner, dancing at Babylon with Emmett, a bit of studying, and an attic cleansing cum treasure hunt.

Justin quickly rinsed off the dishes, laughingly shooing Debbie away when she tried to take care of it. "Nope, you go relax," he ordered. "I'm going to grab a glass of water and review my calculus notes for tomorrow's exam before I hit the hay."

"Okay, okay," Debbie replied, "I think it's time for some shuteye for me. You make sure you ace that exam tomorrow and show up that bigoted teacher, all right, Sunshine?"

"That's the plan," the teen agreed with a conspiratorial grin.

A bit later, having completed a quick revision of his calculus notes, Justin felt more than prepared for the morrow's midterm. The young man crawled under his covers and drifted off to sleep with a satisfied smile on his face, as he imagined fucking a certain brunet queen...

Speaking of fucking, Brian was currently watching two good-looking young men shag each other's brains out against a chain-link fence. The scene was hot, the blond twink pounding into his dark-haired lover with such an abandon that the whole fence rattled, causing Brian's blood to pool in his nether regions. Too bad he couldn't join the pair and work off some of the tension from another shitty workday because, despite the high resolution of his laptop screen, the two men weren't actually real. Porn was sometimes more frustrating than satisfying, thought Brian as he leaned back into his seat.

His journey home had been a nightmare. After he had finally left Ryder at nine, he stopped at a nearby pub for a couple pints. Two pints had turned into four; beer turned into bourbon; and soon Brian was pissed beyond recognition. 

He'd known he shouldn't drive when he finally lurched his way out of the pub at eleven, but he didn't want to call Michael to come pick him up again. His best friend would have harped endlessly about what a poor decision Brian had made by picking up that blond tramp under a streetlight, insisting yet again that all his problems stemmed from that night. Brian had figured he was already doing a thorough job of castigating himself - no peanut gallery required.

The sloshed brunet had ruled out a taxi as well since he didn't want to leave his new jeep where it might be vandalized. Fuck it all, he'd decided, it was late enough that there wasn't much traffic, and he could navigate his way home on autopilot.

It was only after he'd staggered up the stairs at 6 Fuller and encountered the police tape that he remembered he couldn't sleep at the loft. "Fucking blond," he had slurred as he careened his way back down the stairs, "Michael, you were right about that kid." He would have to let Michael know that he was actually right for once, the brunet had sagely decided as he clambered back into the jeep.

Even though he had driven to Lesbian Land innumerable times over the years, Brian needed to turn around twice on his way there since he'd somehow ended up on the wrong street. By the time he finally managed to locate the girls' house and stumble through the front door, he had sobered up a bit and was intent on relieving his extreme horniness.

As usual, everything could be traced back to that insufferable blond twat. If Brian hadn't needed a sketch of a dog to show the nitwits in the art department, he wouldn't have approached Justin at the diner. Then, if not for the call from Jennifer, he wouldn't have had the brat on his mind when he'd left the agency. Although he had scanned the pub for tricks, none of the patrons merited a second glance, Brian unconsciously rejecting them for not being the correct shade of blond, sufficiently slender, or possessing an irresistible smile.

At Lindsay and Mel's house, he'd rushed to set up his laptop on the coffee table, opening one of his favorite websites before plunking down on the couch. 

Now, he was moaning lustily, watching the blond pump into his playmate, one hand inside the unzipped placket of his Zegna dress slacks as he stroked up and down. Just as Brian began another upstroke, the twinkie reached around and pinched his co-star's nipple, causing both dark-haired men to erupt.

His head tilted back, Brian passed out, his rasping snores filling the living room.